Stanford to continue legacy admissions and withdraw from Cal Grants

Summary

Stanford University is opting out of a state financial aid program as it decides to continue to give admissions preferences to students with alumni and donor connections.getty Stanford University will continue to consider the legacy status of applicants as part of its admissions process for fall 2026. To do so, it will withdraw — at least for now — from the Cal Grant program, a state-funded source that provides financial aid to California students attending public and private higher education institutions in the state. Last year, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed Assembly Bill 1780 into law, prohibiting the state’s independent universities from providing a legacy or donor preference in admissions to their applicants. The prohibition is set to go into effect in September. Stanford has considered alumni and donor status for academically qualified students in the past, and it will continue to do so according to updated admissions criteria the university announced last week. Those criteria also include a reinstatement of a standardized testing requirement for the class entering Stanford in fall 2026. When California enacted AB 1780, it became the fifth state to pass some type of ban against colleges giving an advantage to the relatives of alumni or institutional donors and the second state to do so for private institutions. In August of last year, Illinois became the fourth state to pass a legacy admission prohibition, following Maryland, which enacted a legacy admission ban last April that applies to both public and private colleges. Colorado passed its ban in 2021, and Virginia did so last year. Introduced by California Assembly member Phil Ting, the bill went through significant revisions. Originally, it would have prohibited universities from receiving funds through the Cal Grant financial aid program if they gave preferential admissions treatment to applicants with donor or alumni connections. That provision was later amended so that a school that extended a ...